Thomas the Apostle's name came up in conversation today, ostensibly about his travels to India. I was originally wondering about the documentation for these journeys from whatever sources - and then reviewed what he had said or done in the Gospels or Acts. Thomas appears in the Gospel of John and sources at least as early as the 3rd century describe him as a missionary to India. But what struck my attention is a review of the end of John in chapter 20 where Christ reappears to a group of disciples with the sceptical Thomas among them (24 to 29). Having examined the marks of the nails in Christ's hands, Thomas exclaims, "My Lord and my God!" Since there has been so much Trinitarian vs. Aryan debate in the Christian community since, not to mention the reasoning of the JW movement, howdoes this near final episode in John fit into the picture?
kepler
JoinedPosts by kepler
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John 20: 24-29 In the NWT it says the same as elsewhere. Dissonance somewhere?
by kepler inthomas the apostle's name came up in conversation today, ostensibly about his travels to india.
i was originally wondering about the documentation for these journeys from whatever sources - and then reviewed what he had said or done in the gospels or acts.
thomas appears in the gospel of john and sources at least as early as the 3rd century describe him as a missionary to india.
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kepler
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What were two Chinese doing in Roman London?
by fulltimestudent inin the ancient world, people moved around much more than we may have expected, (think of paul's reported journeys and those of his supporters), but the identification of two skeletons in a roman era burial ground, as chinese has surprised historians.. the uk bbc reports: .
dr rebecca redfern, curator of human osteology at the museum of london, told bbc radio 4's the world at one, the find was "the first time in roman britain we've identified people with asian ancestry" and it was "absolutely phenomenal".. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37452287.
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kepler
I'll keep an eye out for the details, but this matter reminds me of claims about the ancient world prior to the 13th century BC. When it came to alloy production of bronze, there was need for sources of alloying metals copper and tin. Copper was in plentiful enough supply around the Mediterranean basin. So no big problem for Egyptians and peoples along the eastern shores such as in Asia minor or Canaan.
Just one of the interesting background observations of E. H. Cline's book, 1177 BC, the Year that Civilization Collapsed.
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Lucifer:" Care for a light, anyone?" John Calvin: "No, thank you."
by kepler inabout a week or so ago, this old subject came up again within the family.
none of us were jws, but i see evidence that many have mulled this subject over too.
and then were a couple of remarkable coincidences.. but my less than casual reading of isaiah and ezekiel was reference to nebuchadnezzar and the king of tyre respectively.
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kepler
About a week or so ago, this old subject came up again within the family. None of us were JWs, but I see evidence that many have mulled this subject over too. And then were a couple of remarkable coincidences.
But my less than casual reading of Isaiah and Ezekiel was reference to Nebuchadnezzar and the King of Tyre respectively. And the epithets employed in Isaiah depended on whose translation you studied. In some cases Lucifer is not used in translation. Especially outside of the English language. And with the Vulgate in Latin, it is not entirely clear what Jerome had meant if proper nouns were not denoted by capital letters. King James uses this expression. Others use Day Star, whatever that would be. But taken in context, where both Isaiah and Ezekiel are predicting or calling on downfall for earthly monarchs in other chapters - and these as well, I don't see the satanic connection. And if the Prince of Darkness is, well, the Prince of Darkness, how could he be Lucifer as well?
In both cases these ruminations on the nature of evil distracts from some other problems with the passages. For in the case of Isaiah, he never met Nebuchadnezzar - or Cyrus. So a copy of Isaiah must have been interesting reading during Exilic times and the century leading toward them after Isaiah died. And in the case of Ezekiel, calling down God's wrath on Tyre or Egypt both appear to be unsuccessful prophecies, aside from the issue that Isaiah had remarked on Nebuchadnezzar already in the same context. But Egypt stayed intact against the Babylonians and the Prince of Tyre held off the Babylonians for 13 years as an island fortress and traded with its prosperous colonies. Nebuchadnezzar did not effect a blockade because he had no navy of any consequence. Ezekiel appears to have been playing the odds.
He addressed Isaiah chapter 14, but not Ezekiel. For that see Barnes.
Since Calvin wrote and did much, I do not suggest that anyone (non Presbyterian) take him as someone above error. But considering from whence a lot of what we hear (literally) about the origin of evil comes from his preaching successors ( hear it is nearly 500 years later), I have to wonder just how far we have really come.
Isaiah 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven!
Isaiah proceeds with the discourse which he had formerly begun as personating the dead, and cloncludes that the tyrant differs in no respect from other men, though his object was to lead men to believe that he was some god. He employs an elegant metaphor, by comparing him to Lucifer, and calls him Son of Dawn; and that on account of his splendor and brightness with which he shone above other. The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance; for the context plainly shows that these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians. But when passages of Scripture are taken up at random, and no attention is paid to the context, we need not wonder that mistakes of this kind frequently arise. Yet it was an instance of very gross ignorance, to imagine that Lucifer was the king of devils, and that the Prophet gave him this name. But as these inventions have no probability whatever, let us pass by them as useless fables.
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Sun,moon, earth and mathematics .
by atomant injust thought id let you all in on some info i found on northeasttruth.com.
that magical moment where the moon blocks out the sun!
but only just enough to perfectly cover the suns disc, whilst still allowing us to see the corona of light and other electromagnetic forces radiating from it.. this only happens because the moon diameter is exactly 1/400th the size of the suns and is positioned at exactly 1/400th of the distance between earth and the sun!so, when we see it from the surface of earth, we are in the only place this can ever be seen, at the only time it could ever happen.
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kepler
I just noticed that half of the paragraphs I submit get edited out.
1. Something about the units of measure for the meter and the second in terms of integers and how they could be interpreted.
2. Remarked that Carl Sagan's science fiction novel "Contact" leaned remarkably on numerology.
They're both gone.
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Sun,moon, earth and mathematics .
by atomant injust thought id let you all in on some info i found on northeasttruth.com.
that magical moment where the moon blocks out the sun!
but only just enough to perfectly cover the suns disc, whilst still allowing us to see the corona of light and other electromagnetic forces radiating from it.. this only happens because the moon diameter is exactly 1/400th the size of the suns and is positioned at exactly 1/400th of the distance between earth and the sun!so, when we see it from the surface of earth, we are in the only place this can ever be seen, at the only time it could ever happen.
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kepler
Bode's law used to have a lot of currency among "planetologists" - until some extra solar planetary systems were detected via doppler and transits of other stars. Haven't heard much about Bode's law lately, save in used and very old astronomy books.
You could look at these as Pythagorean integers of import, or you could look at them as outcomes of efforts to define precise units of measure - until something better comes along.
Regarding planets and their rotation rates. Some planets have roughly ten hour rotation rates. Others don't. But usually planets are not formed in isolation. Their are mechanisms that dissipate their angular momentum so that they often rotate, after a time, synchronously with other bodies. What applies to moons such as ours and the principal satellites of Jupiter, can apply to planets as well with respect to suns.
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Sun,moon, earth and mathematics .
by atomant injust thought id let you all in on some info i found on northeasttruth.com.
that magical moment where the moon blocks out the sun!
but only just enough to perfectly cover the suns disc, whilst still allowing us to see the corona of light and other electromagnetic forces radiating from it.. this only happens because the moon diameter is exactly 1/400th the size of the suns and is positioned at exactly 1/400th of the distance between earth and the sun!so, when we see it from the surface of earth, we are in the only place this can ever be seen, at the only time it could ever happen.
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kepler
Nice values in decimal.
Now how do they look in binary or hexadecimal?
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Sun,moon, earth and mathematics .
by atomant injust thought id let you all in on some info i found on northeasttruth.com.
that magical moment where the moon blocks out the sun!
but only just enough to perfectly cover the suns disc, whilst still allowing us to see the corona of light and other electromagnetic forces radiating from it.. this only happens because the moon diameter is exactly 1/400th the size of the suns and is positioned at exactly 1/400th of the distance between earth and the sun!so, when we see it from the surface of earth, we are in the only place this can ever be seen, at the only time it could ever happen.
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kepler
I'm a fence sitter on this one. Yes, the moon cover's the sun very well, and among moons in the solar system it is a rather remarkable one due to its mass ratio rather large, save for the competing examples around Pluto Pointing out the eclipse or occultation phenomenon on another e-mail group discussing possible extraterrestrial life, I submitted this as an unlikelihood of itself. Someone replied that, possibly, as a result during solar eclipses the Earth gets a lot of interplanetary tourists to the watch the spectacle.
But beside the fact that it is remarkable occurrence to observe from a presumed "terrestrial" planet, it is also coincidental that we live at a time when the moon's diameter and the sun's distance make the stage show possible. Earth's distance from the sun probably hasn't budged very much, but the moon has been drifting away from the Earth since its formation. How many million years it has taken to reduce its period a day?
A good question, but worth examining with analysis.
So true enough there are many monthly cycles in biology, but to which lunar period are they attached and how precisely? The earth rotates as well as the moon and the two rotate around the sun. If the earth did not rotate about its axis with respect to the moon, we would not notice lunar tides. Just static levels of water on sides of the earth facing or opposite it. The earth did not always rotate at the same rate (even an ice age can redistribute inertia with constant angular momentum to change angular rate) and the moon did not always have the same distance or period.
So, I would be less inclined to look at "Pythagorean" tie-ins for the significance of the numbers. Some will be biological. Others will be subtle stability points in celestial mechanics. Mysterious - but not on a metaphysical plane.
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Revised New world translation in other languages
by TheWonderofYou ini think the translators are now very busy or even in the endspurt to present next year the editions in many other long expected languages like spanish, french, dutch, german...perhaps there will be even two spanish versions.. this will spark a new fire in the hearts of the publishers to go out and evangelize using the bible.
month to month a new translation is available on jw library app, like portoguese since july.
but they will not use the paper in door-to-door but the app.. insiders have already access to parts of many of those coming translations and are very happy with the translation comments like "really beautiful translated" are typical..
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kepler
And, yes, an electronic Bible with an app that lets you get hold of the latest translation as soon as it comes out.
How about a Wikipedia style Bible brought to you by the people who translated it perfectly (!) the first time, but right now are working on making it even better, all previous versions no longer "operational".
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Revised New world translation in other languages
by TheWonderofYou ini think the translators are now very busy or even in the endspurt to present next year the editions in many other long expected languages like spanish, french, dutch, german...perhaps there will be even two spanish versions.. this will spark a new fire in the hearts of the publishers to go out and evangelize using the bible.
month to month a new translation is available on jw library app, like portoguese since july.
but they will not use the paper in door-to-door but the app.. insiders have already access to parts of many of those coming translations and are very happy with the translation comments like "really beautiful translated" are typical..
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kepler
Gee. Wonder what they will do with Greek and Hebrew editions?
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Your thoughts on the Libertarian party
by James Mixon ini really like what governors w.weld and g. johnson bring to the table.. not familiar with the libertarian party and will do some investigation,.
but any thoughts on this party..
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kepler
JM,
Know several of them locally or from correspondence with other groups. Like many movements people are drawn to this one for legitimate reasons. At least one novel that could serve as a primer on libertarianism was written by Robert Heinlein ( The Moon is a Harsh Mistress). Heinlein had a way of examining social ideas by allowing them to develop into future societies - in this case, a lunar colony about to go independent later this century.
Particular issues that my libertarian friends pick up on are "progressivism", the nanny state and the abuse of rights by police in their search and seizures or treatment of suspects.
But more to the point this year. Governors Johnson ( Interviewed recently in the NYer) and Weld served New Mexico and Massachusetts without scandal, controversy or partisan rancor. This is something that makes them very attractive to me this election year. I don't see them with much likelihood of winning, but if a 3rd or 4th party attracted enough votes, the likelihood of the two principal candidates sailing through the electoral process would be diminished.
Donald Trump's shortcomings - one distasteful anecdote after another. His persona: like Berlusconi in Italy, Peron in Argentina or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or the Presidential winner of the '36 election in Sinclair Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here." (This deserves an asterisk. He wrote it in response to his wife Dorothy Thompson's impressions of HItler in '33 or '34, something to which Rutherford was completely tone deaf to or accepting. He would have fit nicely though in the "Elmer Gantry" cast though.)
So then what do we have in contrast to Mr Trump from the other side? Ms Clinton has her good sides and bad. And were there a decent Republican candidate other than Trump, she would probably be defeated now that all sides of what she offers have been examined. But in this case of "trumping", it's like the "Game of Scissors, Paper and "Stones". As recently reported, HRC's basic Methodist do-gooding beliefs are credible, but on the other hand we have someone who with her husband has amassed enormous wealth for this 3rd run on the presidency. For veterans such as myself, I take the e-mail server issue seriously - and her denials - and the likelihood that many secrets that would be on them were compromised. That Mr & Ms Clinton did not separate and divorce might be good in one context, but it also reflects an inability to face real problems. Bill's endorsement of her at the Convention is an emotional moment - but such references ( also with the Trumps) are not the sort you put on any job application - why for the Presidency. What were convention goers smoking. As a "Democrat", the Clintons seem to be of the machine variety. There were over a dozen heavy hitting Republicans in contention and they all shot themselves off. Clinton ran against nobody with the DNC backing.
It all kind of hurts. Hence you can why I am considering the same alternative. Not because I anticipate liberarianism's post apocalyptic joys.